The lonely musical path of Grace Nono and Bob Aves
Ethnic songcraft is one of the loneliest art forms ever.
Imagine creating beats and melodies that instantly connect with listeners on a gut level but don’t feel relevant to their day-to-day lives.
So pity the artist who makes them and is appreciated only by high-brow critics and one or two fellow travelers.
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It may seem strange then that Filipino roots music made Grace Nono-Bob Aves Group was the top attraction on opening night of this year’s Malasimbo Music and Arts Festival, held March 1-3 in Puerto Galera, Mindoro.
The headliners on the next two nights were international reggae superstar Jimmy Cliff and blues babe Joss Stone.
Who are Grace Nono and Bob Aves anyway?
Grace Nono cut her teeth in a cover rock band. She became a celebrity in the ‘90s as much for her striking good looks as the music she made that blended ethnic influences and sentiments in three-minute pop songs.
Bob Aves is Grace’s current musical partner. He first made waves in jazz-rock circles in the mid-70s, progressing to become a sought-after session player and producer of forward-thinking records.
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Together, Grace and Bob are behind Tao Music. The label, they say, aims to “create a home and venue for the release of innovative recordings, as well as those that advocate various socio-cultural and environmental issues.”
Distinctly Filipino music
Early in his career, Bob Aves expressed a desire to create a distinct Filipino contribution to world music.
He once said, "It's about time that we Filipinos create a sound that truly represents our layered consciousness shaped by our living history. This is something that cannot be copied nor simulated from other cultures but can only be the fruit of a continuous process of getting to know oneself and one's environment.”
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After spending some time in the limelight, Grace Nono turned a keener ear and eye to the country’s musical heritage.
The road less traveled
She took the path less traveled and for the next 15 years learned the oral traditions or traditional chants from around the Philippines.
She produced records of local oralists as well as her own improvisations of texts and tunes orally transmitted across generations.
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“It was partly from my dissatisfaction with my own habit of copying foreign models as propagated by the market and by colonial education, and partly, from my exposure to other cultures that valued their own musical traditions and that encouraged me to get to know my own,” she explained.
A new sonic universe
Then she discovered Filipino oral traditional chants, an experience she likens to “stumbling into a sonic universe that I didn’t know existed.”
Her “stumbling about” has so far produced a catalog of 10 solo recordings, a compilation of chants by respected oralists in the Visayas and Mindanao and a book called “The Shared Voice: Chanted and Spoken Narratives from the Philippines.”
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Bob has a solo album and a number of releases with Pinikpikan as band member and producer.
‘No demand, but there ought to be’
Certainly, sales has been negligible but that’s not the point.
“We release something not because there’s a demand for it, but because there’s none and there ought to be,” Grace explained.
She herself is better recognized for live performances here and abroad.
With Bob, she has stood on concert stages in Japan, Vietnam, China, France and the US.
A coherent jam
At Malasimbo, Grace (originally from Agusan) and Bob (originally from Negros) performed with Faisal Monal from Cotabato, Alexander Tumapang from Kalinga, Jeri de Leon from Manila, Ryan Peralta originally from Baguio, Nitya Saulo and Bob and Grace’s daughter Tao Aves from Manila.
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The group's repertoire was a coherent jam (or conversation) between Bob's native jazz innovation and Grace's, Faisal's and Alex's oral traditional chants with sacred themes they learned from the country’s oralists and ritualists.
Is her music now a complete break from her pop past?
Pop vs. ethnic
“I wouldn’t want to frame my personal musical history as a shift from pop to ethnic. What we call pop is ethnic elsewhere, the West, for instance,” Grace explained.
“And what is commonly referred to as the ethnic sound is popular because it represents the voice of the people, some of us, at least," she added.
"I certainly hope to maintain a certain popular/populist edge to my sound, in an effort to keep it accessible enough to people from whom much of it comes from.”
Grace Nono is currently finishing her Ph. D. in ethnomusicology at New York University, She is also getting ready to publish her second book, ‘Song of the Babaylan: Living Voices, Medicines, Spiritualities of Philippine Ritualist-Oralist-Healers.’ Her first book, ‘The Shared Voice: Chanted and Spoken Narratives from the Philippines,’ came out in 2008.
